"Holmhurst, Dec. 27.—It was on Monday, the 16th, that I was sitting in my study in the twilight, when the mother came in suddenly. She had been down to Hastings with Mrs. Colegrave and Miss Chichester to see Florence Colegrave at the convent, and there first heard the dreadful news of the event of Saturday. Seeing her so much agitated terrified me to the last degree. I thought that it was Arthur who was dead, and when I heard that it was the Prince Consort, the shock was almost as great. It seems impossible to realise that one will not be able to say 'the Queen and Prince Albert' any more: it is a personal affliction to every one, and the feeling of sympathy for the Queen is overpowering. The Prince sank from the time he read the letter about the deaths of the King and Princes of Portugal. Then they tried to persuade him not to see the messengers who returned from taking the letters of condolence: he insisted upon doing so, and never rallied.... From the first the Prince thought that he should not live, and from the Wednesday Sir Henry Holland thought so too, and wrote in the first bulletin, 'Hitherto no unfavourable symptoms,' to prepare the public mind; but the Queen came into the anteroom, saw the bulletin, and scratched out the 'hitherto:' she would entertain no idea of danger till the last[203].... When the Prince was dying, he repeated the hymn 'Rock of Ages.' ... A letter from Windsor Castle to Mr. P. describes the consternation and difficulty as to how the Queen was to be told of the danger: no one would tell her. At last Princess Alice relieved them all by saying, 'I will tell her,' and took her out for a drive. During the drive she told the Queen that the Prince could not recover. When he died, the Queen gave one piercing, heart-rending scream, which echoed all over the castle, and which those who stood by said they could never forget, and threw herself upon the body. Then she rose and collected her children and spoke to them, telling them that they must rally round her, and that, next to God, she should henceforth look to them for support.
"C. W. sends an odd story about the King of Portugal. After his death, Princess Alice made a drawing of him lying dead, and, at the top of the drawing, the gates of heaven, with Queen Stephanie waiting to receive the spirit of her husband. A little while after, M. Lavradio sent the Queen a long account of the King's illness, in which it was said that when the King lay dying he fell into a deep sleep, and woke up after some little time saying that he had dreamt, and wished he could have gone on dreaming, that he lay dead, and that his spirit was going up to heaven, and that at the gates he saw 'Stephanie' waiting to welcome him in. Everything fresh that one hears of Prince Albert makes one realise, 'Le prince était grand, l'homme l'était davantage.'"[204]
In the course of the winter I was at Miss Leycester's house in Wilton Crescent, and saw there Miss Marsh and Sir Culling Eardley, both of whom told me much that was curious. I remember Sir Culling Eardley's saying, "I feel sure that the destruction of the temporal power will be the end of the Papacy, and I am also sure that there is one person who agrees with me, and that is Pio Nono!" He also told me that—
"One morning Mrs. Pitcairn at Torquay told her husband that she had been very much disturbed by a dream. She said she had seen her little boy of four years old carried into the house dreadfully crushed and hurt, and that all the principal doctors in the town—Madden, Mackintosh, &c.—had come in one after the other to see him.
"Her husband laughed at her fears, but said, 'Whatever you do, don't tell this to the boy; it would only frighten him unnecessarily.' However, Mrs. Pitcairn did not promise, and when her husband was gone out, she called her little boy to her, and taking him on her knee, spoke to him very seriously, saying, 'If anything happened to you now, where would you be?' &c.
"That afternoon, the little boy went with his elder brother to see some new houses his father was building. In crossing the highest floor, the ill-fastened boards gave way, and he fell, passing through all the floors, into the cellar. Half-an-hour afterwards his mother saw him carried into the house, and all the doctors come in to see him, one after another, in the exact order of her dream.
"The little boy recovered; but four years after, his elder brother, playing on the shore at Babbicombe, pulled down some rocks upon himself, and was killed upon the spot."
In March 1862 an event occurred which caused a great blank in our circle, and which perhaps made more change in my life than any other death outside my own home could have done—that of my aunt Mrs. Stanley.
JOURNAL.
"Holmhurst, March 23, 1862.—In March last year dear Uncle Penrhyn died. Aunt Kitty was with him, and felt it deeply. Now she also, on the same day of the same week, the first anniversary of his death, has passed away from us—and oh! what a blank she has left! She was long our chief link with all the interest of the outside world, writing almost daily, and for years keeping a little slate always hanging to her davenport, on which, as each visitor went out, she noted down, from their conversation, anything she thought my mother might like to hear.